EU-Turkey Agreement Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Bob Stewart
Main Page: Bob Stewart (Conservative - Beckenham)Department Debates - View all Bob Stewart's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Lidington
No formal proposal has been tabled as yet. The United Kingdom contributes to EU measures agreed collectively by the EU, but we have also paid out significantly more through our bilateral contributions to meet the needs of refugees in Syria and other countries in the neighbourhood. I do not think we should be in the least ashamed of this country’s role in helping those people in desperate need. One of the reasons I have been so proud to support this Government’s commitment to the 0.7% UN target is that it gives us the resources and the flexibility to respond to humanitarian crises speedily, wherever in the world they happen to be.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Am I right in assuming that the captain of Royal Fleet Auxiliary Mounts Bay has rules of interdiction that allow him to report people-smugglers’ vessels going across the straits between Turkey and Greece and to pick up people in distress, but not to stop any such vessels that do not wish to be picked up? If so, will the Minister tell us why that is the case? More to the point, if those rules pertain, what action are the Turkish security forces taking on the eastern seaboard of Turkey, which we are subsidising, to stop people-smugglers’ vessels setting out towards Greece?
Mr Lidington
Turkey already assigns a large proportion of its coastguard resource to the Aegean. For the reasons that I gave in answer to an earlier question, intercepting every small boat making the relatively short crossing to one of the Greek islands is not as straightforward as is sometimes suggested. For greater detail, I refer my hon. Friend to the statement that the Secretary of State for Defence made in the House on Monday, in which he said:
“The primary purpose of the mission is to provide monitoring, surveillance and reconnaissance of the migration route across the Aegean, which will better enable the Turkish and Greek coastguards”—
and the EU Frontex mission—
“to intercept the boats and disrupt the business model of the criminal traffickers.”—[Official Report, 7 March 2016; Vol. 607, c. 27.]